The
ancient Chinese curse, “May you live in an interesting age,”[1]
is upon us. We are currently living in a time, future generations will
teach, that will either be the defining moment to the destruction of
America or its salvation. Not from extremist attacks, nuclear war, or
domination by another world super power, but from within the halls of
Congress and their defiance of Constitutional boundaries.

Financially,
1913 ushered in what would lead to our current global nightmare. Much
has been written concerning these events and I will not focus greatly
on this in this article, but would like to discuss the movement from
sound, constitutional, money to the current fiat currency we currently
are enslaved too.

Constitutionally,
money has a specific meaning and directs those who have the responsibility
concerning it. Article 1, Section 8, states that Congress is: “To
coin Money, regulate the Value thereof, and of foreign Coin, and fix
the Standard of Weights and Measures. To Provide for the Punishment
counterfeiting and Securities and current Coin of the United States.”
Article 1, Section 10, declares a prohibition on the states to: “…coin
money; emit Bills of Credit; make any Thing but gold and silver Coin
a Tender in Payment of Debts…”

Nowhere
in the Constitution is there a clause that grants the Congress the power
to abdicate that responsibility to any other entity. More specifically
to grant such power to a private banking consortium whose membership
is secret, whose books cannot be fully audited without an act of Congress,
and whose chairman is appointed from a list of potential appointees,
provided to the President, derived from the board of the Federal Reserve.[2]

So
here we have the Congress creating an unconstitutional organization
to manage the nation’s money supply, by an unconstitutional grant
of power which Congress did not have the authority to grant. So what
was the goal in creating this organization?

“The Federal
Reserve sets the nation’s monetary policy to promote the objectives
of maximum employment, stable prices, and moderate long-term interest
rates. The challenge for policy makers is that tensions among
the goals can arise in the short run and that information about the
economy becomes available only with a lag and may be imperfect.

Goals
of Monetary Policy

The
goals of monetary policy are spelled out in the Federal Reserve Act,
which specifies that the Board of Governors and the Federal Open Market
Committee should seek ‘to promote effectively the goals
of maximum employment, stable prices, and moderate long-term interest
rates.’ Stable prices in the long run are a precondition
for maximum sustainable output growth and employment as well as moderate
long-term interest rates. When prices are stable and believed
likely to remain so, the prices of goods, services, materials, and
labor are undistorted by inflation and serve as clearer signals and
guides to the efficient allocation of resources and thus contribute
to higher standards of living. Moreover, stable prices foster
saving and capital formation, because when the risk of erosion
of asset values resulting from inflation—and the need to guard
against such losses—are minimized, households are encouraged
to save more and businesses are encouraged to invest more.”

The
Federal Reserve was created during a time of volatile markets and a
series of boom and bust recessions. Part of the rationale for the Fed
was to stop this cycle and create a mechanism to ensure these things
did not happen, and for a short time it did.

Remember
the roaring 20’s? Money started to flow better, confidence in
the market was high, and money was becoming easier to get. But following
the boom of the 1920’s came the worst recession and ultimately
the worst depression, up until that time. All with the Federal Reserve
at the helm! The very thing that the Fed was instituted to prevent was
made worse because of the Federal Reserve policies.

Since
the great depression America has experienced a roller coaster of failed
monetary policy that has eroded the value of America’s dollar
to the worst financial shape of its history.[4]
But when the Fed first took over, America’s currency was still
on the gold standard. Even though we had paper bills, they were backed
by gold and silver. In fact they were not called notes, as they are
today, but were called certificates and were redeemable in either gold
or silver.

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But
today we have “Federal Reserve Notes.” What is a note? According
to Black’s Law Dictionary a note is: “A written promise
by one party (the maker) to pay money to another party (the payee) or
to bearer. “In other words a note is an IOU or a debt instrument.
On the other hand a certificate is defined as: “A document in
which a fact is formally attested.” In dealing with money the
certificate attests to the actual fact that it is worth a specific commodity.

I
mentioned “fiat
currency” earlier. For those that may not know -- the term
“fiat” is defined in Black’s as “An order or
decree, especially an arbitrary one.” In other words our currency
is money only because the government says it is and that money has no
value other than what the government says it has. Black’s goes
on to define “fiat money” as: “Paper currency
not backed by gold or silver.”

But
what many people will find interesting is that Black’s Law Dictionary
also defines the meaning of “real money,” that’s right
real money – because what we are using is not real money.
Real money is: “Money that has metallic or other intrinsic value,
as distinguished from paper currency, checks, and drafts.”
What we have is currency, government talking heads use this term a lot,
not real money.

In
essence we have not been using real money in America since President
Franklin D. Roosevelt outlawed private gold ownership and confiscated
all gold bullion and coin.[5]
We then moved into the Bretton
Woods era where primarily only governments traded in gold at an
agreed upon rate of $35 and ounce, until 1971 when President Nixon ended
the practice.[6]
We have not had any link between our currency and real money since.

So
why does this matter? Because we can no longer pin the value of our
currency to something tangible, its worth is only what the confidence
in the market says it is worth. Today our currency, though not completely
devalued, is at the lowest in modern history. With the recent announcement
of Quantitative Easing II (QE2) an additional $600 billion dollars will
be dumped into the system. Because the current dollar reflects the value
of the American Market, adding additional currency into the pool dilutes
the overall value of the dollar and will, by design and intent, create
inflationary conditions.[7]

What
this means is higher prices for nearly everything we will be purchasing
in the near future. This winter is what I have come to call “the
winter of discontent,” as many of us who are living paycheck
to paycheck will no longer be able to make our paychecks cover the increased
costs of food, gas, clothing, etc, but will have to decide between fixed
costs, such as our mortgage and the new inflated costs for the products
we need to live.

How
do we know this is coming? We know based primarily by looking at commodity
costs. When any business produces a finished product they must first
purchase the base commodities to construct that product. For manufacture
of metal parts the company purchases raw steel from which the part is
fashioned. Food products in the grocery store are provided by vendors
that produce the various products from the raw food items. If these
base commodity prices are increased the final product in turn increases
in price.

Because
there is a lag time between when the products are made and when they
end up on our store shelves, the cost is also lagged (in most cases
– gas is one exception) until the new product hits the shelf.

Here
are a few of the commodity price increases that have occurred recently:[8]

•
Corn is up 17.59%• Wheat is up 10.37%• Sugar is up 21.94%• Cotton is up 15.92%• Rubber is up 6.53• Tin is up 9.46%• Soy Bean costs rose by 4% in one day (Nov 9)

Over
the past 12 months we have seen increases anywhere from .03% (Oranges)
to over 102% (Iron ore). In turn each product will increase in cost
at the register in a comparable percentage. This kind of volatility
does not lend to confidence in the market and with the Fed monetizing
another 600 billion dollars into our already fragile economy -- further
inflation is a certainty.

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The
only thing maintaining value today is real money (Gold
and Silver), and as long as we allow our government to steal from
the American people and put our children and grand children’s
future at risk they will continue to do so until there is nothing left.[9]
We must demand the end of the Fed and a return to sound “real
money.”

Michael
LeMieux was born in Midwest City, Oklahoma in 1956 and graduated from
Weber State University in Utah with a degree in Computer Science. He
served in both the US Navy and US Army (Active duty and National Guard)
and trained in multiple intelligence disciplines and was a qualified
paratrooper. He served with the 19th Special Forces Group, while in
the National Guard, as a Special Forces tactical intelligence team member.
He served tours to Kuwait and Afghanistan where he received the Purple
Heart for injuries received in combat.

Mr. LeMieux left military duty at the end of 2005 after being medically
discharged with over 19 years of combined military experience. He currently
works as an intelligence contractor to the US government.

Michael
is a strict constitutionalist who believes in interpreting the constitution
by the original intent of the founding fathers. His research has led
him to the conclusion that the republic founded by the Constitution
is no longer honored by our government. That those who rule America
today are doing so with the interest of the federal government in mind
and not the Citizens. Michael believes that all three branches of government
have strayed far from the checks and balances built into the Constitution
and they have failed the American people. A clear example is the Second
Amendment, which the Supreme Court and the founders have all said was
an individual right and could not be "infringed" upon, now
has more than 20,000 state and federal laws regulating every aspect
of the individuals right, a definite infringement. He has traveled around
the world living in 14 States of the Union including Hawaii, and visited
(for various lengths of time) in Spain, Afghanistan, Kuwait, Korea,
Scotland, Pakistan, Mauritius, Somalia, Diego Garcia, Australia, Philippines,
England, Italy, Germany, and Puerto Rico.

Michael
now lives in Nebraska with his wife, two of his three children, Mother-in-Law
and grandchild. His hobbies include shooting, wood-working, writing,
amateur inventor and scuba diving when he can find the time.

Nowhere in the Constitution
is there a clause that grants the Congress the power to abdicate that
responsibility to any other entity. More specifically to grant such power
to a private banking consortium...